


Love and Longing in the Only Tim Horton’s in Kentucky

by Princip1914



Series: Summer of 1969 Road Trip [1]
Category: Good Omens (TV), Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett
Genre: America in the 1960s, Angst and Humor, Blow Jobs, M/M, Road Trips, Semi-Public Sex, getting emotional up in this Tim Hortons, it's about the aesthetic, it's about the yearning, melancholy ruin but make it absurd, no happy ending, pining while fucking across America, the author apologizes to all Canadians for this fic, the hoover dam cameo appearance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-26
Updated: 2020-04-26
Packaged: 2021-03-02 01:26:51
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,284
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23856823
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Princip1914/pseuds/Princip1914
Summary: Ineffable angst, but make it maple syrup flavored. Alternatively, a demon and an angel go on a road trip in America in the Summer of Love.
Relationships: Aziraphale/Crowley (Good Omens)
Series: Summer of 1969 Road Trip [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1741231
Comments: 62
Kudos: 126





	Love and Longing in the Only Tim Horton’s in Kentucky

**Author's Note:**

> The prompt for this, if you could call it one, was "melancholy pining in an abandoned, misspelled Tim Hortons in Kentucky.” I am not sure of very many things in life, but I am quite sure I delivered on every word of that absurd sentence. Read on at your own risk.
> 
> More people have been reading this fic recently, so I'm adding another note to say that this fic and the second one in the series are a bit angsty and do end unhappily, but the third fic in the series has a happy resolution!

In the summer of 1969, nearly two years after the exchange of a thermos of some theological import, an angel and a demon were driving on a country highway in America. If asked, Crowley would have said he was on a tour of temptation. Aziraphale, if pressed, might have muttered something about miracles. An outside observer, however, could be forgiven for thinking their journey was simply a road trip. The air was thick and damp with the smell of vegetation, the countryside flying past the windows was wildly green, and 1969 was, after all, the Summer of Love, a fact for which both ethereal and occult entities had received commendations from their respective head offices. Under these circumstances, they could be forgiven, Crowley thought, for any number of indiscretions. Aziraphale very carefully did not think about forgiveness, and very very carefully did not think about indiscretion. He did, however, allow his hand to slide ever so slightly across the gear shift to rest against the warm line of Crowley’s thigh.

Aziraphale was, as he was wont, talking about food. “They have a new thing in America called fast food. I’m really not sure about it on the whole, but a few years ago I was working a miracle here...well a great deal further north actually...I had the most wonderful thing, a little fried ball of dough flavored to taste like maple syrup but what is fascinating is there was no actual syrup--” 

Crowley leaned into the curve of the road, leaned into the incandescent indent of Aziraphale’s index and ring finger pressed against the tight denim of his jeans. He was listening to Aziraphale but he was also thinking of this: of rumpled sheets in a half a dozen motel rooms across America, of the sounds of the highway filtering in from an open window, of digging under the bed to put his undershirt and pants back on and Aziraphale’s dark blue eyes as he said ‘leave them.’ Crowley was remembering an enormous dam they had driven across passing from Nevada to Azrizona, but he spared little thought for the human ingenuity that built it. Instead, as Aziraphale’s fingers crept further across the narrow spread of his thigh, he thought of the green desert plants that would bloom below the cliff-face of the dam if it were to suddenly give way, of what greedy, growing things might rise from the sand to drink and drink of the flood. 

“...it was called a Tom Himbos?” Aziraphale was saying. “Something like that anyway, they sold coffee too. Pity there are none outside of Canada.” 

“Tom Himbos?” Crowley gripped the wheel, intoxicated by Aziraphale’s voice, by his carefree smile, by the hand now resting fully on his thigh, by the sweet air rushing past the window. “I think I saw one on the map actually, it’s coming up just here in the next town.” And, as the demon said the words, a Tim Hortons was indeed very surprised to find itself in Lexington Kentucky, give or take a few letters in the sign, nearly fifty years before corporate decided to expand to the US South.

“Here we are,” Crowley said, pulling into the parking lot in a spray of gravel. 

“My _dear_ ,” Aziraphale said. Aziraphale was not thinking of the warm brass of half a dozen ordinary motel keys pressed against his palm. He was not thinking of the divots above Crowley’s hips, somehow the most naked part of him when he was undressed, delicate, fragile, just the right shape for the press of angelic thumbs. Aziraphale was not thinking of a dam that they had driven across in the desert and how an impossibly large amount of water was held behind it and how one tiny crack could grow minutely for six thousand years then split open all at once. He was not thinking of the roaring tide that would flow into the valley if it gave way, of the awesome destructive power of all the water and the new kind of life it would leave behind. Instead he was thinking of doughnuts. 

“Ah,” he cried. “I remember, they’re called timbits! And it’s a Tim Horboms, I think, not a Tom Himbos.” 

“Easy enough,” Crowley grinned at him behind his sunglasses and made a complicated gesture with his fingers. Above them, the neon letters obligingly rearranged themselves. 

“Oh, after you,” Aziraphale said, holding the door. 

***

Around them, customers bustled and staff took their orders as if there had always been a somewhat erroneously named Canadian coffee and breakfast chain on this particular stretch of rural highway just south of Lexington Kentucky. 

Aziraphale licked the sugar off his fingers. “You should have one.” 

“Nah,” Crowley said, head pillowed on his hand, watching Aziraphale eat. 

“They’re good. Here,” the angel held a small bit of dough between his fingers. Crowley bent his head and took it, closed his lips around those warm digits and swallowed whole.

“S’good,” he said. 

The maple flavoring was sticky and artificial. Aziraphale’s eyes were dark. 

“It is good,” Aziraphale said. “When you miracled this place, did you also miracle the bathroom free?” 

“Did I…? Angel, we don’t need to use the--” 

Aziraphale’s eyes twinkled across from him. 

“Oh,” Crowley said. 

“Oh,” Aziraphale echoed. 

Crowley did not know, as Aziraphale settled him on the seat of the toilet, as the angel knelt on the dirty floor of the bathroom to take him ever so softly into his mouth, that it would be the last time for many, many years. As Crowley spread his hands on the broad expanse of the angel’s back, kissed the warm live pulse that fluttered in his throat, gasped at the clench of a body around his own, he did not know that tomorrow would bring with it a sternly worded note on the motel desk, a crackling message left on the motel answering machine, and that these two communications would result in an abrupt end to the road trip that was not a road trip and twenty years of frosty silence. He did not know any of these things, could not have known them, and yet, as he mouthed at Aziraphale’s sensitive nipples while an irate customer rattled the door handle, he could not help but feel a premonition of an ending drawing nigh. When he recalled the taste of Aziraphale’s skin, as he did frequently in the barren years that followed, it was always tinged with the bittersweet flavor of an ice lolly melting in the mouth, sweet but fleeting, never meant to last past the summer. 

***

Crowley was alone this time. He had business in Kentucky, something about corrupting a politician, so easy it was done in a single afternoon. He drove slowly to the spot, unsure if he would dare to go inside, to order a maple timbit from the counter, to ask--oh someone preserve him--to use the restroom. 

Instead all he found was a blank patch of earth. Even the parking lot had been jackhammered and removed, piece by piece. He stood and stared at the red earth for a long time. Across the street from the spot, a construction crew was building another chain restaurant. Crowley reached into his pocket and withdrew a cell phone, a bulky brick-like thing a far cry from the sleek device he would later own. His fingers flew as he punched in a familiar number. It rang and rang and rang. Crowley let it ring until the shadows grew long around him, until the workers across the street, having finished hanging a garish sign with the letters A&W, packed up and left. Still it was not answered. Still the line did not cut off.

**Author's Note:**

> 1\. I will not be held accountable for my actions  
> 2\. I blame the NSFW chat in the GO Events discord server for everything.  
> 3\. The first Tim Hortons was established in 1964. If you thought I wasn’t committed to historical accuracy just because this fic is pure crack, you thought wrong. Yes, I wrote this at 2am, but I also did _research_. I have _standards_.  
> 4\. Come hang out on Tumblr [here](https://princip1914.tumblr.com)


End file.
